See, thanks to LJ I can track my whole Trekkie journey. Right from 2007 when they announced that Chris Pine would play Kirk and I was all dubious, to last year when the first teasers came out and I thought, should I bother watching Heroes to find out more about this Zachary Quinto guy, to now when I'm plotting nu!Trek marathons. T______T

On hindsight, it seems like I'm destined to get sucked into Trek. It's always hovering there on the periphery, a milestone in the history of fandom, an important pop culture text in its own right and one of the most high-profile works of science fiction (one of my favourite genres). J.J. Abram's shiny lensflare-y universe of pretty people came along and poof. I protested plenty on the way into the fandom; now I guess I'm in it for good. The older TV shows and movies weird me out, but Trek '09 has a strong enough following on its own and even though it's just 6 months old, there's a very rich subfandom to mess around in.

One thing I learnt from my Trekkie conversion: never believe the hype, judge for yourself. I didn't like the trailer. I ignored reviews and other opinions. It was enough that it was Trek -- what kind of sci-fi junkie would I be without watching it?

So this is what I'm taking to watch Avatar this Tuesday, which is part of our Epic Star Trek (2009) Actor Marathon of Doom ©. Let's dub it ESTAMOD for short. More on it later. Avatar is Zoe's contribution to The Cause, but even if I didn't manage to pull the ESTAMOD off, I'd have dragged people to watch it anyway because it's James Cameron, the auteur behind Terminator and Titanic. And that's enough for me. Never mind the 3D, which is wasted on me, or whatever SFX -- I'd never watch a show just for that. I like cheesy, I like pretty, and above all, I treasure the fan experience, geeking out over a shared love, be it mainstream or esoteric. That's why I try for opening day screenings whenever I can.

Back to ESTAMOD. For my own reference:

Chris Pine Blind Dating / Princess Diaries 2 / Just My Luck (haven't decided yet)
Zachary Quinto Selected Heroes episode(s)
Zoe Saldana Avatar
John Cho Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
Karl Urban Doom (he is hott stuff ♥ anivad, shall we watch this on Tuesday morning at your place?)

Not 100% confirmed yet:

Anton Yelchin Terminator Salvation
Simon Pegg Hot Fuzz
Eric Bana Munich? Black Hawk Down?

I wish this was an ontd_startrek thing, then we would have something on behalf of Singapore for the Monday Meetup post! Sometimes I think we should have our own comm...

Once again, our dear national newspaper spotlights a show that anyone who's serious about their TV fix would have seen already -- Merlin. Okay, I guess they have to keep it all legal and above-board, and Starhub is just SLOW in importing shows, hello have you seen Singtel's model?

I guess I shouldn't be complaining about the lack of same-week telecasts because I haven't been regular in watching Merlin! Exams and other things get in the way, plus this season is wildly inconsistent as compared to the previous one. Maybe I'm pampered by the final third of the first series, which was great and I expected that to carry over, but it didn't and somehow this year's episodes lack the same hook that made me marathon the show last year in a hardcore way. The writing is weaker, characterisations all over the place, where is Morgana, strange continuity -- whatever they did the previous week seems to have zero effect on the episode -- and the laundry list goes on.

Then I got up to "The Sins of the Father" and omg show you have redeemed yourself. Well if I rewatched "Excalibur" and started nitpicking on the retcon I might think differently, but I'm such a sucker for those crazy intense moments and my heart just bleeds for Arthur. ;_;



This ep is all Arthur's, really. His sense of honour, desire to know more about his mother (nice Arthur/Merlin bonding moment there about missing parents), and the whole showdown with Uther over Igraine was painful and angst-riddled in best way. What hurts more is that you see how vulnerable Arthur is to outside influences, that people are pushing him around and he doesn't see it, so when Merlin has to persuade Arthur that magic is bad, that was one nasty double-whammy.